Her hand draped; met with mist

and calmly laid. Blue and milk

and midnight kissed, cooing porcelain

 

down to the sweet drip,  where rose petals

drowned, and rose again, like Annabel’s hair

pinched in the air, and the trawler nets from the sea.

 

The curtain snitched, a maid, threadbare, gave to the wind,

and the moon stared. He drew her fair,

watched the sea clothe her in the sigh

 

and promised youth, and love, would fix

with the tied pearl ribbons around her foot,

growing lungs sore in the parting strides -

 

shuddering; salty kisses falling on her lips.

Her smile, her smile, he held bewitched

in ripples eclipsed in the dewy light

 

that touched her face, like a sleeping child,

and whispered, once, and only once,

his keeping heart, “Good night”.